1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments disclosed herein relate to the field of computer software. More specifically, embodiments disclosed herein relate to cluster consolidation in a web services cluster.
2. Description of the Related Art
Organizations use machine clusters to host web services. These clusters may include many machines that communicate with each other. Services are software, which evolves over time and may fail. Clusters typically handle live traffic, and changing the software providing a service from a cluster of servers often requires a “hot update,” i.e., making the change while the cluster continues to handle requests. Virtual machines provide services, but by their nature, can be moved from one host to another. As such, some physical computing system can host different services. As with any software product, there are risks associated with changes, so much effort goes into minimizing the risk of updates. For example, two services running on the same machine (physical or virtual) may not be compatible. However, these efforts may lead to increased costs in hosting the services. There is therefore a need to reduce the risk of deploying new services to web clusters while keeping costs down in doing so.